Semantics: Ars Minor or Ars Major?

I was doing a bit of research on the history of drama education when I came across an author’s note in a 1933 text entitled The Education of Shakespeare claiming that the Gutenberg Bible is not the first book that Gutenberg ever printed.

The author, George Arthur Plimpton–a publisher and collector–asserts that he himself holds a leaf of Donatus’s Ars Minor, printed by Gutenberg from “c. 1450,” or from before the publication of the Gutenberg Bible.

Plimpton also was the former owner of the Sieve Portrait of Elizabeth: his son gifted it to the Folger, where it now hangs in the exhibition galleries. This first edition of his book, The Education of Shakespeare, was gifted to Mrs. Folger, inscribed on a front leaf.

Personally, I remember generally being taught that the Gutenberg Bible was the first printed book in Europe, so this surprised me and sent me searching for some more information. Donatus, who wrote the popular Latin grammar book of the Middle Ages entitled Ars Minor but often simply known as the Donatus or Donat, was the teacher of St. Jerome¹, and his Latin grammar was widely used until the 1500s. While surely interesting, the news that something was published before the Bible is not necessarily revelatory, as scholars have posited that many things were actually published before the Gutenberg Bible. For example, many sources claim that thousands of indulgences were printed the year before the Bible, and Princeton even holds one of these indulgences printed in the year 1454. The Gutenberg Bible generally is considered to have a print date of February 1455. However, even though most sources agree that Gutenberg published other items before the Bible, a quick Google search of a phrase like “the first thing Gutenberg ever published” reveals a host of websites that immediately state the Gutenberg Bible as the answer to this question, including History.com and several university library websites. This is a fact taught in many history books, though the language is often more specific. According to Harvard Library and echoed across historical sources, “The Gutenberg Bible is the first major work printed in Europe with movable metal type.” 

For some reason, the idea of printing thousands of indulgences does not meet the criteria of “major work.” Perhaps the concept of indulgences as a major work seems too critical of the church, or it simply does not meet a perceived requirement as it was a single page. The Gutenberg Bible is 1,288 pages, and the Library of Congress states that approximately 180 Gutenberg Bibles were printed: due to their size and length, most definitely a “major” undertaking. According to the University of Washington, at least 190,000 indulgences were printed. Doing the math, that means that 231,840 pages of the Gutenberg Bible were likely printed. Gutenberg also likely printed 190,000 pages of indulgences. The suggestion that one of these is more “major” than the other feels like a thin argument at best. However, since indulgences were single-page documents, they also may not meet the requirement of a “work.”

It’s common that historians simply see prior printings as “tests” for the Bible, which is especially favored as an opinion by those who seek to suggest that Gutenberg printed the Bible for its religious significance. However, in reality, all of Gutenberg’s publications were highly profitable, from popular school texts to indulgences contracted by the Church to the Bibles that were finally available more readily. Gutenberg was well-known to be heavily in debt by 1452 and was sued in 1455, which is the year generally attributed to the earliest available copies of the Gutenberg Bible, so it’s likely that the Bible was an effort to simply make a bigger profit.

Columbia Library holds the copy of the Donatus that Plimpton referenced in his book, and they include the following in its description:

In addition, Princeton holds a fragment of a Donatus that they claim for several reasons—including the number of lines and its binding—was printed before the Gutenberg Bible. 

Since evidence points to at least 24 copies of the Donatus being published by Gutenberg on the moveable-type printing press prior to the Bible, the statement that the Bible is “the first major work printed in Europe with movable metal type” would only hold true if the Donatus was not considered a major work, even if Gutenberg had only printed one single copy of it first. In no way could the text be considered a minor work, clearly evidenced by its status as the most commonly-used Latin grammar book until Lily’s was required by law in the 16th century; from 400-1500 AD, it was included in almost every institutional and private library. Princeton calls the Ars Minor the “standard” Latin grammar for the Middle Ages, and an article published in Huntington Library Quarterly claims that the Donatus was the most common grammar from 350-1500 AD, noting it as “probably more than any other book is found among the first attempts of the early fifteenth-century printers.” The Folger holds a  commentary of the Donatus from 1509, showing its consistent usage through that date. The 1508-1509 John Rylands Library copy available through EEBO contains the inscription “Incipit Donatus minor cu[m] Remigio ad vsum pusillo[rum] Anglicana[rum] scolariu[m],” or “Donatus minor begins with Remigio for the use of the little Anglican scholars,” demonstrating the creation of new publications as late as the early 16th century.

Andrew Kersey, Senior Writer at the Huntington, calls schoolbooks some of Gutenberg’s “lesser” works before repeating the echoed claim that the Bible was his “first major work.” If Gutenberg had merely copied a textbook popular that year, or a book copied a few times for use in a single region, this claim of a text being a “lesser” work could be reasonable: but the Ars Minor served as the most widely-used textbook in the most fundamental area of study across Europe for nine hundred years. If Donatus’s Ars Minor can take its rightful canonical place as “the first major work printed in Europe with moveable type,” perhaps the value of education both to our modern generation and to those in the past can remind us to question widely-accepted information and to argue for accuracy.